Method, system and computer program product for facilitating digital certificate state change notification

A message-based approach is presented for propagating a digital certificate state change notification throughout a data processing network. The approach includes registering at least one interested party with a certificate authority for state change information relating to the digital certificate; and automatically sending a state change notification message from the certificate authority to the at least one interested party responsive to the certificate authority noting a state change in the digital certificate. The at least one interested party can be registered by the certificate authority in a subscription list with initial forwarding of the digital certificate to the certificate authority for confirmation as part of an initial authentication process. The automatically sending results in sending the state change notification to only the at least one interested party registered with the certificate authority to receive the state change information for the digital certificate at issue.